Introduction:

In 1995 William J. Mitchell described the library of the future in his book “City of bits: Space, Place, and the infobahn”. A library which would never close and instead of having miles and miles of shelves for millions of volumes there would only be a catalogue available on the network. What at the time seemed to be a radical proposal of the paperless office hype was rapidly contradicted by many new libraries which were built all over the world and by the growth of the publication figures of books.
Nevertheless a new type of library evolved, the so called “hybrid library”. Here all sorts of media are collected and besides that the building acts as a communication hub, a place where lifelong learning is fostered. It is stated that by doing so the fundaments of our knowledge society are laid. As well as the traditional library services, this place offers working and learning environments, meeting areas, cafes and all sorts of arts and leisure pursuits.Libraries are places of multiplicity. Accessibility, both contentwise and conceptually as well as literally (the integration of the building in the urban context) is crucial for its success. Thus library buildings depend on their aesthetic presence within the city. The building, here first and foremost its facades, act as mediator between institutions and citizen, between inside and outside and need to signalize a clear message.

In our days climate change together with tendencies of globalization lead to a highly disputable development within the architectural discipline. Banal, dull and exchangeable facades dominate newly constructed buildings. The slogan “Ziehen sie ihr Haus warm an!” of the Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development implicates an unpredictable negative effect on future building typologies. Modern low energy buildings rely solely on compactness and insulation. They look alike no matter where they are located, whereas early sustainable architecture was highly dependent on location, orientation, local climate as well as local building materials, program and user behavior. Such autochthonous parameters resulted in a local building culture as well as in highly differentiated typologies.

Within the studio work we will discuss these assumptions, we will investigate the typological evolution of libraries and we will further develop the concept of a hybrid library building. This is mainly for children and teenagers in Berlin Kreuzberg/Schöneberg. There will be a strong focus on the local milieu and on the question how to attract young users, especially those who would be least inclined to enter a library in the first place. Careful consideration of the context is required and an extreme site will call for unorthodox architectural solutions.

On a voluntary basis it is possible to submit the studio work to a student competition called <medien(t)räume: raumvisionen>